"the mosaic calendar." . 151 



approach to accuracy when they might expect that observation 

 would indicate intercalation in the near future. The Jubilee 

 period is not a precise cycle : others are more accurate, and 

 occasionally a very forward spring, or a very late one, might cause 

 a deviation from the expected course. But in the great majority 

 of years, the intercalation finally adopted would follow the 

 indication which the Jubilee cycle had already supphed. 



Some Gentile Calendars. 



Of all nations, Israel is the one which has been most freely 

 accused of borrowing its customs, its science, its philosophy, 

 its reUgion from its neighbours. I think if I were a Jew I should 

 be proud of the accusation, for the only possible comment is 

 " how marvellously they improved the material they borrowed." 

 But without debating that question, they possessed one thing 

 which was certainly their own — the Mosaic Calendar. No 

 nation possessed a system of observances of this nature, at once 

 so exalted on the rehgious side, and so accurate on the 

 astronomical, and withal so simple and so complete. 



" Israel went out of Egypt," and we may take for example 

 the calendar of Egypt. Here we have a purely solar calendar : 

 twelve months, indeed, were reckoned to the year, but the months 

 had no relation to the moon, and the year itself was so far from 

 being a true solar year that its commencement travelled steadily 

 down the months, and in 1461 years it made a complete journey 

 through the seasons. 



Take next the Babylonians : connected with Israel in origin,, 

 for Abraham came from Ur of the Chaldees ; connected with 

 Israel in later history, for it was to Babylon that the Jews went 

 into captivity. 



In early Babylonian times, before Abraham had left Ur of the 

 Chaldees, the method of determining when the year was to be 

 emboHsmic was by observing the crescent moon at its setting 

 with Capella. If the two celestial bodies set together on the first 

 day of the month Nisan, that year was normal ; if, on the third 

 day of the month Nisan, Capella and the moon set together, that 

 year was full, i.e. contained thirteen months. The method was 

 very simple, but was open to the objection that, owing to the pre- 

 cession of the equinoxes, the beginning of the year fell later and 

 later. The year thus formed was a luni-solar one, and so far 

 like that of Israel ; but the particular solar year employed was the 



